1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a toner recovery device and an image forming apparatus having the toner recovery device.
2. Description of Related Art
In image forming apparatuses, for example, a method that causes a transfer image formed with toner to be carried on the peripheral surface of a photoreceptor drum, and directly transfers the image carried on the peripheral surface of the photoreceptor drum to paper or the like; or a method that causes the image carried on the peripheral surface of the photoreceptor drum to be carried on an intermediate transfer belt and indirectly transfers the image, or the like, is widely used.
In a case where such a method is used, after an image is made to be transferred to paper, a minute amount of toner may remain on the surface of an image carrier (a photoreceptor drum, an intermediate transfer belt, or the like).
The residual toner on the surface of the image carrier becomes an obstacle when the next new image is formed.
Accordingly, the residual toner needs to be removed by the cleaning device.
The toner removed by the cleaning device is conveyed inside a conveying pipe by conveying members, such as a screw, and is recovered as waste toner by a toner recovery device.
The toner recovery device includes a toner recovery container that stores waste toner, and the waste toner is stored inside the toner recovery container.
Additionally, although the toner recovery container is desired to enlarge the capacity of waste toner, it is difficult to enlarge the container body itself due to restrictions on the arrangement of the container body inside an image forming apparatus body, or the like.
For this reason, it is necessary to efficiently store the waste toner so that the waste toner can be stored in a limited storage space of the container body as much as possible.
In a related-art toner recovery device, a toner feed member for feeding the waste toner to the back of the container body is provided inside the container body.
This toner feed member is a screw that has a device shaft and a fin portion erected from the device shaft, and can feed the waste toner in the axial direction in which the device shaft extends, with rotation around the device shaft.
Incidentally, the above related-art toner recovery container has an elongated shape along the axial direction of the screw.
For this reason, the waste toner can be efficiently stored in the storage space of the container body by conveying the waste toner sequentially to the back side of the container body by the screw.
However, if the toner is conveyed in this way, there are problems in that restrictions are reversely imposed to the shape of the toner recovery container and the degree of freedom in the shape of the container becomes reduced.
For example, in a case where a container shape with sufficient width with respect to the screw is adopted, the waste toner can be efficiently stored in the axial direction of the screw, but the waste toner cannot be efficiently stored in the radial direction of the screw.
Accordingly, in a case where when toner is conveyed in the above related art, a sufficient storage space in the radial direction of the recovery container cannot be utilized.
The present disclosure has been made in view of the above problems, and an object thereof is to provide a toner recovery device and an image forming apparatus that have a high degree of freedom in the shape of a toner recovery container and can store toner efficiently.